


i like your voice (i like your mouth)

by subtlyhaught



Category: The Young and the Restless
Genre: F/F, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 04:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15235458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtlyhaught/pseuds/subtlyhaught
Summary: "Just six months." She echoed. It was almost comical to her, but that could be the fastly evolving panic talking. "Just six months of yknow, not seeing each other. Of eating breakfast alone. Of making too much coffee for one person in the afternoon. Of sleeping on the left side of the bed because the right side is your favorite. Of whatever this awful, awful feeling is. But its just six months, right?"





	i like your voice (i like your mouth)

**Author's Note:**

> bc im on mobile and i can't add extra tags, id just like to put a tw for mentions of past abuse in tessas life. its not mentioned in detail, but i talked about it a bit. also, this isn't the happiest fic whoops. enjoy.

"Mariah, c'mon."

"Just give me a minute."

Mariah heaved a sigh, letting it slip past her lips in shaky increments as she fell into the plush of the ranchs sofa. Her hands were trembling and her head hurt and she couldn't quite wrap her mind around what Tessa was saying. She couldn't possibly be actually considering leaving, could she? Not after everything. Not after they'd finally got the timing right. Not after months and months of torturous not yets. Not after Mariah had finally gotten to the point where she could hold Tessa's hand comfortably in public, without the burn of peoples eyes on her back making her squirm. She couldn't possibly be leaving.

And yet, here they were, seven months into a relationship Mariah had slaved for, only to find herself in fear of losing it all over again.

"California?"

Her voice was weak; a strangled gasp at best. Mariah almost thought it was someone else that had uttered the states name. But when her eyes met Tessas, she knew the voice could only be hers.

"Its just six months," Tessa tried. It was a feeble attempt at consolidation, and Tessa knew as much. It showed in the way her hands weakly gestured in the vague direction of the southern state, and in the dip in her voice as she tried to talk around what the real problem was.

"Yeah," Mariah almost scoffed, her hand raising to swipe at her face, trying to catch the tears before they fell. "Just six months." She echoed. It was almost comical to her, but that could be the fastly evolving panic talking. "Just six months of yknow, not seeing each other. Of eating breakfast alone. Of making too much coffee for one person in the afternoon. Of sleeping on the left side of the bed because the right side is your favorite. Of whatever this awful, awful feeling is. But its just six months, right?"

Tessa stared at Mariah after her words, her mouth opening and closing as if to say something, but instead she only managed to look unbelievably crestfallen.

A moment passed in silence. Tessa could feel the pressure of her sock clad heels digging into the old carpet below her, her bones turning stiff with every second that passed. It felt as though her legs were becoming tree roots, and soon enough she'd be unable to move, anxiety rooting her to the spot in front of the redhead. Mariah hung her head low, her palms now pressing into her eyes as she tried to calm her breathing. Tessa was still standing in front of her, staring decidedly at the ground, her bottom lip snagged between her teeth in a look of both crushing sadness and incredible focus.

Finally, Tessa took a step forward, settling into the couch next to Mariah. Her eyes roamed over the silhouette of Mariahs slouch, watching her ribcage shudder with every breath and her chin tremble after every exhale, until finally she snaked her hand around one of Mariahs wrists and pulled it away from her face.

Mariah turned her head to watch the brunette, propping herself up on her remaining hand as Tessa pulled the other one to her lips, letting them linger on her knuckles for a moment before lacing their fingers together. The movement was familiar, practiced even, and it let Mariah melt into the girl next to her a little. Forget about the incoming reality for a moment.

Until Tessa spoke.

"You don't think we'd make it."

Her voice was soft, as if she had almost intended to whisper. It almost seemed as if it was an attempt to cushion the blow that the words would cause because, even though Mariah didn't say it, the sentence was loud and clear at the forefront of her mind.

Mariah cleared her throat, her eyes following the movement of their hands. Tessa had dropped them in her lap, her thumb running across Mariahs knuckles over and over again. It was an old trick Tessa had picked up from before they had even been dating. It was good for moments like when Mariah had showed up at Tessa's apartment at two in the morning, after the reality that her mother could very well be packing up and moving hit her square in the chest. Or when the two of them went out for dinner as a couple for the first time and Mariah couldn't stop bouncing her knee. Or when Hilary drove Mariah up the wall and the redhead could only relax in the haven of Tessa's office.

But now the action barely managed to even out Mariahs breathing.

Tessa watched as Mariah rolled her tongue over her teeth, snagging her bottom lip between them a second after. It was a look of deep thought, and all Tessa could do was wait until Mariah was ready to talk to her.

So instead she focused on their entwined hands. She had always had a complicated relationship with holding people's hands. Holding Mariahs hands, even more so. Less because she didn't know how to go about doing it, and more because she was always so ready to, that she'd act awkwardly in her haste and end up gripping at uncomfortable angles and trying to recover by finger play or by overcompensating with far too much movement.

She remembered the first time she really ever held Mariahs hands, in San Francisco after their first kiss. The redhead had completely launched herself into panic mode and Tessa had been aggressively resisting the urge to kiss her worries away, so instead she had stepped forward and pulled Mariahs hands towards her. In the pregnant pause that followed Tessas reassurances, the brunette watched as Mariahs eyes dropped down to their hands, to Tessa's face, and then back down to their hands, _this can't be platonic_ written clearly across the redheads face.

But that moment had been short lived, and Tessa never got to press Mariah on the matter. Granted, that had been her own doing, what with her whole _its the festival, we just got caught up in the moment_ speech. But still, it left curiosity burning in the back of her throat.

Then after there were moments here and there. She held her hand at the GCAC, after the redhead had just helped her out of a tricky situation, and again when she had convinced her to come clean to the police about Crystal. She remembered clearly wanting nothing more than to hold Mariah close to her chest and never let her go the day she moved in with Noah, but instead only stepping forward and gripping her hands. And she remembered, with a stab to the heart, the time she put her hand over Mariahs after bringing her wine and chocolate, only for the redhead to pull away coldly.

One of the first times Tessa and Mariah held hands as a couple, they were in public. It was just on a brunch date at Crimson Lights, and really it was nothing more than a brush of their fingers, but Mariah still felt her heart jump into her throat. She ended up pulling a Santana Lopez and dragging their hands under the table so no one would see them, but Tessa still beamed at her from across the table, and Mariah ducked her head to laugh, feeling sheepish as a blush crawled up her cheeks.

It took a few months until Mariah was confident enough in herself and her identity to hold Tessa's hand in public, but Tessa didn't mind. She knew it would take time for Mariah to settle into her own skin again. After all, she had been fighting this part of herself for months before she had told Tessa, and even then only two other people knew. But all of a sudden, it seemed Mariah was getting outed to people left and right, and it didn't really give the redhead any time to process. She was the girl who fell for her brothers girlfriend, when all she wanted to be was Mariah Copeland.

So Tessa let her take her time. What kind of girlfriend would she have been if she didn't?

It had been four months after their first date that it happened. It wasn't anything big, not at all. Tessa had arrived at the ranch to pick Mariah up for a dinner date, and Mariah had invited her in so she could sit while the redhead finished up whatever she had been doing in the kitchen. Nick and Sharon entered the living room just as Mariah did, and before she knew it, Mariah had entwined her fingers with Tessas and said goodbye to her mother, with promises of being back home by next Thursday. Mariah probably didn't even remember it, but Tessa did, because it was the first time Mariah had shown any outward affection in front of other people, even her own mother.

So watching Mariah now, with her eyes dark and her eyebrows creased, made Tessa feel like someone was slowly draining the air from her lungs.

Slowly, the redhead stood from the couch, pulling her hand away from Tessa's. The brunette followed her movements, doe eyed, her pulse increasing with every second Mariah was silent for.

And then:

"I'm going to bed."

Tessa watched, mouth falling open as the redhead stalked down the hallway, and up the stairs.

She was probably going to California for six months, and Mariah's response was to sleep.

The brunette sat in silence for a few moments after Mariah had left. She wasn't mad, per say, but instead she felt kind of.. Empty? Empty, yes, but empty with a hint of hurt. With a hint of dismay.

It took her a good couple of minutes to actually peel herself off the couch and follow Mariah, all her limbs feeling like lead suddenly. She dragged her feet down the hallway, heart hammering harder and harder the further down she got, until finally she turned the corner into Mariahs room.

It was the same as it had always been while Tessa had been around. The walls were painted a dark navy shade, while fairy lights were strung up along the top of Mariah's bed and around her lamppost. She had two bookshelves tucked into the corner of the room, though they were mostly filled with knick knacks and photos in lieu of literature. Most of them included Tessa, though a good couple were of Sharon, Faith, or Kevin. Clothing items adjourned the floor in a perfectly practiced mess, and the garbage that stood by Mariahs bed was stuffed to the brim.

Mariah herself was sat on the bed, back to Tessa. The brunette easily recognized the gentle shake of her shoulders, though she wished she didn't. She hated seeing Mariah like this, but she hated herself even more for being the cause of it.

The brunette stepped hesitantly into the room, causing the spruce floorboards beneath her feat to creak rather obnoxiously. Mariah didn't even twitch. Tessa caught her lip between her teeth, running her tongue over the grooves on the inside of her mouth that she had earned after months and months of hiding from her father, biting her cheek to stay quiet.

  
She tiptoed across the wood in silence, rounding the corner of Mariahs bed and crouching down so she could look the redhead in the eyes.

Mariah, for her part, blinked down at Tessa with a kind of quiet sombre that was almost scary. She only watched as Tessa pulled her hands towards her chest, laying wet kisses across her fingers before she laced them with her own. Mariah supposed it was supposed to be comforting, but really it only seemed to break her a little more.

"Mariah," Tessa hushed, using everything in her to keep her own tears at bay. "Cmon, talk to me."

"And say what?" Mariah didn't mean for it to sound so snapping. She didn't want to fight with Tessa, she really didn't, not after she fought so hard to get her in the first place. She ended up screwing her eyes shut, her hands twisting around Tessa's until they were clenched in a death grip, her entire body sagging under the weight of her words. "You're going away."

At the sound of the loud sniffle, Mariah cracked her eyes open to see Tessa's head hanging low at her knees, a hot tear running down her face and falling onto the floor with a soft splatter.

"I know."

It was soft. There was no malice behind the words, no fight, nothing but empty acceptance. But it somehow did something to quell the tension in Mariahs gut, and the redhead found herself pulling the brunettes head into her lap, and watching as Tessa clung to Mariahs calves like they were her only tether to reality. More often than not, Tessa tried to be the strong one. She was the queen of faking a smile and toughing through things, her face holding a practiced façade that she could turn on and off whenever she needed to. But Mariah knew how the brunette scrubbed at the permanent mark across her back and the crescents on her hips every time she stepped into the shower. She knew how the girl flinched at loud noises, like thunder, or the slam of a car door. She knew how her hands twitched every time Mariah started towards the front door because the prospect of being left alone made her indescribably nervous. She knew that Tessa had to be the strong one all her life, and so seeing her in a moment of vulnerability like this was rare.

So Mariah held Tessa's head close to her stomach, letting her cry into her shirt as Mariah rocked gently back and forth, her own tears slowing down considerably now that she realized it wasn't really all about her.

Tessa had been dreaming of this moments for years. Going to California, travelling between cities to meet producers and play shows and just be in her music. Still, Los Angeles was a long ways away from their little city in Wisconsin, and between touring and meeting, Mariah was afraid that there'd be no relationship left for Tessa to come back to.

"What do we do?" Mariah breathed, voice shaky, but present.

Tessa shrugged feebly. "I don't know," she murmured, partially muffled by the material of Mariahs shirt, until she pulled away from the redheads stomach to look her in the eyes. "I don't know."

Mariah blinked a few times, taking in Tessa's blotchy cheeks and red nose, the way her lips quivered at the admission. She slid her hands down from where they were tangled in the hair at the back of Tessas head, so she could slip them into the dip between her jaw bone and the back of her neck.

Tessa was staring up at her, expectant and analyzing, waiting for Mariah to make the first move. Her tears were still drying on her cheeks, but she felt less like the world was caving in on itself with Mariahs hands holding her face. The redhead leaned down, pressing her lips to Tessa's forehead, letting her eyes flutter shut. She felt the brunettes hands snake around her wrists, a soft sigh escaping her, as she relaxed slightly into the action.

"We'll figure this out, okay?" Mariah's lips tickled Tessa's forehead as she spoke, tone soft. Tessa moved her head softly in a nod, and Mariah shifted herself so her nose bumped Tessa's forehead, before settling into the groove at the bridge of the taller girls nose. "We're going to figure this out."

Another nod from Tessa, a soft exhale. "Yeah," she sighed, running her thumbs over Mariahs wrists. "We will."

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr as @i-said-oops, twitter as @lameiish, and instagram as @lameish/@brveryn if you wanna yell at me


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